~~~
Day’s Verse:
Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won’t be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple.
2 Tim 2:~15
~~~
Please help me raise money for the MS Bike Tour Cape Cod Getaway. Donate today on my MS Participant page.
~~~

I know I haven’t updated in a while. After Memorial Day, my workweek turned hectic. I spent a portion of Monday through Wednesday taking pictures of scientific staff for some HR stunt. This sounds easy but isn’t — many of the people turned out difficult to track down; then some of them refused to relax and smile naturally no matter what I did (this part actually took a huge amount of energy: Maintaining cheerful and amusing chatter with people, every one of whom told me “I hate having my picture taken” before we started, in order to get the occasional actual smile or laugh, which I then had to try to capture as well as possible); and of course some weren’t happy with the pictures I took (to be honest, I’m not 100% pleased with all of them, either) so I had to take more. Then one had the bright idea to take pictures in the lab (fluorescent light galore! Gah!) and then other scientists I’d already photographed said “But I want some in the lab, too!” And then actually choosing which picture to send to HR turned into an ordeal all of its own, especially with the more attractive women (“It’s not easy being beautiful,” one of my coworkers commented. Apparently it isn’t — you have high expectations all the time) …All of which gave me a deep and abiding respect for professional portrait photographers. By the end of Tuesday, when I took pictures of 7 of the 11 people, I felt wrung-out and exhausted. I also got almost no work done last week what with all the photography interruptions. And then, of course, there’s the nerve-wracking aspect of leaving my camera with Security so they could review the pictures I took. This is actually a pretty dumb policy because I brought my cable in to download the pictures onto my work camera. What would keep me from taking non-allowed pictures, downloading them to my work computer, and then emailing them to myself? In any case, the thought of security guards messing with my camera drove me to distraction until I got it back safely. I’ve sworn off taking pictures of anybody at work ever again. Seriously.

And now, apropos of nothing, here is a picture of cute goslings I took on Memorial Day.

Bike talk. Yesterday I rode my bike 80 miles. First I rode to Framingham to meet up with a group ride put on by the Charles River Wheelmen; then I did the ride with them (map for those parts of the ride); then I rode home (map). I rode a 15-mph pace — lately I’ve been maintaining a pretty reliable 14-mph pace by myself — on the first two portions of the route, so by the time I was riding the last 14 miles home, I felt utterly exhausted. I got home and slept. Then I ate a lot. I punctuated this by sitting around uselessly trying not to use my legs. Today I’m going to attempt another 80 miles. I just hope my rear end, not to mention my legs, can take the abuse.